Project 8 WilliamKentridge

William Kentridge

Anything is possible

            William Kentridge was a Jewish South African painter.  His work was very different when compared to other artist.  Not only because he turns his art into animations, but the amount of time he puts into making a short clip is very long.   This is because William decides to draw one scene then erase or alter it for the next scene.  This process takes hours upon hours to create the final animation, but William is always satisfied with the outcomes.

His choice in materials is also very simple, but the amount of scenes he creates is what makes his work stand out.  In most of his drawings he uses charcoal with the exception of a few colored pastels here and there.  He makes most of the scenery in his drawings very dull or black then adds just a touch of maybe blue or red to add a little color. 

            


          To make his animations a little more interesting William Kentridge puts music into his animations that we see in the Art 21 Film.  He chooses opera in many cases or just a classical piano playing through out his animations.  He states that u can get lost in the music with internal conflicts and other “ terrors of Hierarchy”.  I actually like his style of work because it is very original and knowing how much time was put behind each animation amazes me. 
         One of his pieces that i did enjoy was the animation of the lady that gets blown away.  To create this affect William added wind and recorded the circular motion it moved paper on his work bench.  Then he drew the animation in charcoal adding this wind affect resulting in the figure of the animation to seem like she was blown away into leaves by the wind.
        The only thing I have a problem with is that you can't really hang his artwork up because he put them into animations.  Yea you could put one of his scenes up on the wall, but whats the good of making an animation.  It just seems way too time consuming and not worth the outcome. However, watching the time and effort he puts into each animation makes me respect him because its not easy to be that patient with good results every time.

Project 10

I chose to make a Fear and Loathing collage that has some items they used.  I also included the Circus Casino because one of the main scenes was filmed there.

Project 4 Pamphlet Book

Project 1 Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns Film Review

                                                            Ideas in paint

        Jasper Johns is a contemporary artist from Augusta, Georgia.  He primarily works with paint and takes simple yet meaningful objects turning them into works of art.  In some cases he would also make sculptures that were not too spectacular in my opinion.  One of his best-known works of art that brought him publicity was the “Flag”.  Personally I think he chose this subject because he just came back from the Koran War and he wanted to show his patriotism.  Personally I think Jasper overused the American Flag.  This is because he kept using the flag as the subject of his painting and would just alter its color or scheme.  Out of all his flag pieces, I liked Three Flags the best.  In this case he painted the American flag and added 2 smaller flags on top making the art literally stand out.  
       Another subject that Jasper used multiple times was a simple target.  He would paint a target and add different features to each work.  Such as using different colors and in one of his popular works he added a wood background with sculpted human features on the top.  To give the target a dull look Jasper used many layers of darker paint and let it dry.  Then              he would paint over the dark paint with bright colors adding a aged affect to the piece.

        Jasper Johns also used other simple objects such as numbers, tools, and maps as subjects for his artwork.  To make these simple objects stand out Jasper would add a lot of vibrant colors on top of layers of paint.  He would also take simple numbers and turn them into a very different style of art.  I didn’t like the fact that he chose to use one number so much for his paintings.  However, in his work 0 Through 9 he took all these numbers and layered them over each other to give a very unique original looking piece of art.

  Jaspers art seems very simplistic when compared to other artists, but he managed to create many mainstream works of art.  I still don’t fully understand his specific choice in style of art, but there is definitely something about his works that catch’s the eyes of the public.  You would think that adding and adding would create a clustered look, but Jasper managed to do this with many of his pieces.  Like he said, "Do Something, do something to that, and then do something to that." So his intention was to keep adding and adding until he had his work of art.  A very weird sounding method, but Jasper Johns knows what he's talking about.

Project 2

1) Jasper Johns-Right handed

2) Jasper Johns-Left Handed

3) Rembrandt-Modified Blind Contour

4) Rembrandt-Blind Contour

5) Brancusi Statue 1

6) Brancusi Statue 2

Project 7 Art Expo

2011 Art Expo Exhibition

Midlife Crisis Walrus

Ian M. Lawrence

Pen, coffee, watercolor

The first piece that caught my attention was called Midlife Crisis Walrus by Ian M Lawrence.  I chose this piece of art because it is very bizarre because Ian put a Walruses head and attached it to a middle age mans body.  In the painting you can tell that the Walrus is stressed out and having a middle age crisis.  This is because he chose to give the Walrus a broken tooth showing that he’s maybe had a rough day.  His collar is also popped up and wrinkled adding to his rough looking state.

            To create the image of having a midlife crisis Ian chose to use watercolor to create a dull watered out image.  He also used coffee to stain the paper adding on to the dullness.  To make the outline of the walrus-man Ian used a ink pen.  This piece is very interesting because he used simple materials to make a good piece of art. 

The only bad quality I can think of for this piece is the fact that Ian might have used too much coffee stain on the upper left edge.  However, one good quality I liked was how he left the right corner blank making it seem very open and mysterious.  Mysterious because you have no idea where the Walrus-man is going and what he was previously going.                                   

Iron Rust

Calah Jane Fortune

Iron, acrylic paint, wood, acid

I liked this piece of work because the materials used were very different than everyone else’s materials.  In order to add the rust affect to the art Calah had to use acid on the iron, which is something I have never seen in art before.  She also used good-sized pieces of wood as the boarders that still have bark on the edges.  The art also pops off the canvas in some areas from the acid fizzing up giving it a rough bubble like texture.

Another quality that I like about this work is the layers that were put onto it.  You can tell that the paint is thick with multiple colors beneath each layer because it stands out of the painting giving it more texture and uneven surfaces.  I didn’t like the amount of green because it was overpowering the other colors.  Also the boarders of the piece could have had a little more work done to them.

Project 5 Basquiat

Basquiat Film Review

In Jean Michael Basquat’s life he managed to prove that art comes in many different ways and forms.  In his case it came in the form of graffiti in New York during the 1980’s.  Basquiat was born in 1968 to his mother, Matilde, who was born in Brooklyn to Puerto Rican parents. His father, Gerard, was  born in Haiti.  Basquiat’s mother supported his art passion when he was young and even took him to art museums to help influence him.  Though very passionate about helping her son Matilde had mental problems and was sent to a mental institute when Jean was only 11 years old.

 While Basquiat was in high school he and his friends came up with a comic name SAMO, which was a marking that basquiat put with his graffiti as a signature to leave his name anonymous, eventually becoming a huge hit in New York.  Basquiat had a very different way of living not knowing how he was going to get money and where he was going to end up.  He even stated in the film that he would live of chips and cheeto’s depending on what he found.

During this time in New York man young artistic people lived there.  Basquiat being one of these people even decided to start a band with some of his friends even though they couldn’t play instruments very well.  However, Basquiat being very artistically influenced managed to make songs with his band even with a lack of musical talent, and they came to call their band “ Gray”.   But it wasn’t until in the 1980’s when Basquiat received money and fame for his artwork.  In 1982 Basquiat had his first US solo exhibition, which received rave reviews and began a need for more of Basquiat’s art for consumers.  The works he displayed were very different from what art collectors where use too because it was graffiti on canvas and paper.  By using obscure and very odd images basquiat created a whole new style of painting in the art community.

Basquiat kept on working and creating new works of art in his loft that he obtained through Andy Warhol throughout the mid 1980’s.  He even appeared on the front of the New York Times news article in 1985.  Everything was going for Jean, but in 1988 his beloved friend Andy Warhol died during a simple operation crushing Basquiat worst than anyone else.  After this event he started taking a lot more drugs until he developed a drug problem.  After this tragedy Basquiat began using a lot of different drugs and would go into his art studio alone for countless hours.  This continued and didn’t get better until one day he decided to go to Hawaii to try and kick his drug problem. When he came back he seemed to be doing better, but one night was found dead from mixing different drugs together.

            This was truly a tragedy at the prime of a brilliant artist.  Though he was emotionally a wreck his paintings were still very popular and only became more valuable after his death.  In 2007 one of his earlier paintings “Fallen Angel” went up for auction and received a miraculous 11.2 million dollars plus commission.  His artwork is still going around in circulation and keeps on making record breaking profit.